


Like a Petal on a Stream

by byjillianmaria



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Canon Compliant, Character Death, F/M, Post-Canon, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-12
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:08:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21764272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/byjillianmaria/pseuds/byjillianmaria
Summary: "What is it?""The boy is dying."And Hades gave her a choice to make.
Relationships: Eurydice/Orpheus (Hadestown)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 92





	Like a Petal on a Stream

Eurydice isn’t immediately concerned, when Hades calls for her.

He does that, now. Calls workers to his office to discuss projects, to get their input. Sometimes, in the summer months, he calls them in for tea or a drink to stave off the loneliness that his wife’s absence brings. He’s even done it to her a few times, and it’s always tremendously awkward for both of them but the whiskey he’s got in his office is nicer than anything left in Persephone’s bar when she’s away, so she’s not going to complain.

Besides, things are different in Hadestown now. He’s not a tyrant, and the workers are not just drones. Even Hades is only a man, now. And his workers are allowed to be the same.

When she reaches the office, there’s no whiskey or tea. And it is, she remembers, Fall. She saw Persephone get off the train just last week.

But it’s still not until she looks at Hades’s eyes that she starts to get worried.

The boss has expressive eyes. Probably why he hides them behind sunglasses so often. But he’s not hiding them now, and so she can see the hesitance and the pain and the skin-crawling sympathy in them. It turns what was going to be an awkwardly polite greeting into a question dragged to the edge of rudeness by shock.

“What is it?”

Hades’s brows draw together. She senses that he’s trying to find some tactful way to say whatever it is he’s going to say, but tact has never been his strong suit. When he speaks, it’s a blunt rumble.

“The boy is dying.”

Eurydice’s stomach drops. There’s no need to ask who  _ the boy _ is. Orpheus is never far from her thoughts, even now. They sing a toast to him every night. “What?”

“Attacked in the woods.” Hades speaks in a quiet voice. She thinks he’s trying to be gentle. “He’s bleeding out. Won’t last the night.”

“Help him.” The words are out before she has a chance to think them through, like she’s not just a girl, like she has any power over the king of the mines himself, like she has a right to not beg but  _ demand _ . “Help him, do whatever it takes to save him, you owe that to him after everything, why are you just  _ sitting there _ —”

“Eurydice,” he says, and it’s the name that quiets her more than his tone. He doesn’t call her by her name. He calls her Songbird. He calls her Girl. He doesn’t call her Eurydice.

“Orpheus is dying,” he tells her. “There’s nothing anyone can do.”

Eurydice bows her face into her hands. She feels a sob lodged somewhere in her chest but she can’t quite figure out how to get it out. Maybe it would feel better if she could, maybe she’d feel less like she’s drowning.

“I could send Hermes to him,” Hades continues in that horribly quiet voice. “He loves the boy. He’d try to save him. He’d be able to prolong his life by a few days. Orpheus will spend much of those days unconscious, and the rest in pain. That is how he would die, losing himself, losing everything to the pain. But I can still do that; it is in my power. Or…”

“Or?” Eurydice asks, voice muffled by her hands.

“Or I can send you.”

Eurydice’s head whips up, eyes wide. Hades is watching her, his face impossible to read.

“You would be a shade,” he says, almost like he’s warning her. “You won’t be able to interact with anyone but him. But he’s close enough to death that he could see you, hear you. Feel your touch. And when it’s over, you’ll be able to lead him to the train. Take him where he belongs.”

Where he belongs. “The fields,” Eurydice says, needing to know, needing to confirm.

“The fields,” Hades replies with a nod, and, oh, Eurydice could laugh if she wasn’t so preoccupied with figuring out how to cry. The fields of rest were what she had longed for, once. She’d wanted to sleep away all her worries and be reborn, wake into a life that didn’t make her ache. But that chance was stolen from her. Nothing would wake her now.

Maybe she should be jealous of Orpheus, getting that sleep that she craved. Maybe she should blame him for it, for damning her to this. Maybe she should want his fate to be the same as hers. But she didn’t. She  _ couldn’t _ . He tried for her. She’d return the favor.

“Send me,” Eurydice says, her voice cracking. “Send me. I’ll take him home.”

Hades stands and presses both of his hands to her shoulders. It tingles unpleasantly through her like an electric current. She thinks he says something, but she can’t hear him.

She’s already gone.

She blinks. She’s standing in a forest, and she can’t feel the wind on her face or smell the trees. But she’s  _ here _ , and for a second she’s so captivated by the sight of the stars above that all she can do is gawk at them.

Then she hears a weak, gurgling cough. She remembers why she’s here.

Orpheus hardly looks like Orpheus anymore. And it’s not because the years have changed him, although they have—he’s got a beard now, and the hair on his head has thinned—but most of it is his injuries. Hades had told her that he was  _ attacked _ , but this…

She’s seen injuries before, ugly ones, gory ones. But they’re different in the mines. The shades are already dead, they can’t feel pain. They barely react and they heal up quick. Orpheus isn’t healing. He’s making a high whistling sound that has only a passing resemblance to an honest breath, and presently he begins to tremble all over.

“Orpheus—Orpheus.” Forgetting her horror, she rushes to him, kneels beside him. She brushes his hair, still as messy as ever, out of his eyes. “I’m here, love. I’m here.”

For a moment she fears that she’s come too late to do him any good, but she supposes that she should know better. Those eyes would be able to find her no matter what. “It’s you,” he whispers. Blood trickles from the corner of his mouth.

“It’s me.” She pulls his head into her lap. She strokes her fingers through his hair and looks into his eyes, making sure that she’s the last thing he sees, which is a small comfort but it’s the best she can give him. She can’t feel or smell the forest but she can feel  _ him _ . She can feel his trembling and the heat that rolls off of him.

And she feels his labored breathing when it finally stops.

She’s the one trembling, now, as though it’s passed from him to her. Her hand shakes when she passes it over his eyes. Her voice is a willowy keen. “Orpheus,” she cries.

“Eurydice.”

The voice comes not from his body but from above. She looks up, and there he is, glowing with that new-soul light. And he’s  _ her _ Orpheus, somehow, gangly and a little awkward, clean-shaven.

“You look like… like you,” she says. He only blinks at her, confusion so familiar that it aches all through her. How many times had she dreamed of that expression, the one he made while puzzling over his music, or when someone at the bar told a joke he didn’t quite get? “Most folks look how they looked when they… you know,” Eurydice explains. “But you look the way you did when we were together.”

He looks down at the body in her lap with a small frown. “Most of me died when I turned,” he admits, quietly. “I guess my soul stayed the same, even if my body didn’t.”

Eurydice moves the head off of her lap carefully, even though she doesn’t need to be. Stands and goes to where he really is. “I forgave you for that a long time ago, love,” she tells him, pressing a hand to his now smooth cheek.

He nods. “I know that. I know.” But he still doesn’t look her in the eye.

Eurydice sighs. She doesn’t want this, doesn’t want what little time they have avoiding each other. If Orpheus needs to get this out, she’ll let him. “Maybe you should say it anyway.”

Orpheus’s eyes fill with tears. “I’m sorry, Eurydice. I’m so  _ sorry _ .”

She stands on her toes to hug him. He always used to laugh at her when she did that, said he liked her at the height she was. He isn’t laughing now.

“I’m sorry, too,” she whispers in his ear.

He collapses to his knees and buries his face in her stomach and sobs, hard like he hasn’t been able to in years. And Eurydice’s own tears finally fall, drip into his hair as they both mourn how it ended between them, and all the things left unsaid.

Eventually, they both cry themselves out. Orpheus’s voice is shaky when he speaks, exhausted. The voice of someone who wants to lie down forever. “Now what do I do?”

Eurydice smiles, tries for soft. “I take you home.” She offers him a hand. Part of her wants to stay here, but she knows what happens to souls that don’t go where they belong. “Let’s go.”

“Okay, let’s go. How?”

As if in answer, a train whistles. Orpheus looks up in surprise, but then his eyes soften. He gets to his feet, and he doesn’t let go of Eurydice’s hand.

They walk, side by side and arm in arm and all of that. It’s bittersweet, knowing how limited it is, but Eurydice still relishes the steady presence of her lover beside her.

Hermes is waiting there. At first Eurydice fears that he’s going to be angry with her, but he just gives a sad smile instead. He looks older than she remembers. “You got a ticket?”

Orpheus looks panicked for a moment, but then Hermes laughs. It’s gentle and fond, and when he steps forward Eurydice sees tears shining in his eyes.

“I didn’t think so,” he says, and claps a hand on Orpheus’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. You don’t need a ticket where you’re going. Come on aboard.” It looks for a second that he wants to say more, but in the end, he just gives both lovers a nod. His eyes linger on Eurydice until she nods back.

The ride down underground is quiet, mostly. Orpheus tucks Eurydice to his chest and holds her, and she’s more than happy to be held.

“What’s it like in the factories?” Orpheus’s voice is quiet, faltering. “Is it…”

“It’s better,” Eurydice assures him. “The work is better, and we’ve got more of a choice about how we spend our time. You did change things, Orpheus. You brought the world back into tune.”

Orpheus lets out a breath. “I know. I just wish…”

“I know.” She presses a kiss to his cheek. “I know, love. But enough of that. There’s no room for regret where you’re going.” There’s plenty of room for it where  _ she’s _ going, but she doesn’t tell him that. No need to break his heart all over again with things he must already know.

The train slows to a stop. Hermes comes in to see them out himself. “Take care of yourself, Orpheus,” he says, as if anyone can get up to trouble here. But Orpheus nods, serious.

They’re let out in a beautiful field of flowers. They look soft enough to lie down in forever, and Eurydice can see Orpheus being pulled to do just that. But he resists. He clings to her, to the hem of her shirt.

“Eurydice,” he says, and there’s panic in his voice, even as she sees his eyelids droop.

She kneels down beside him, smooths his hair back, kisses his forehead. “Hush, lover,” she tells him. “It’s alright.”

“But it’s not…” His head rests in the crook of her neck. His breath, or the memory of his breath, is warm against her skin. “It’s not fair.”

“Shhh.” She holds him in her arms. “It’s okay. Let go of your guilt. I want this for you.”

And she does. Orpheus deserves another chance at life, a chance to be happy. Such a joyful soul brightens the world just be being in it. It would be selfish, to want to rob everyone of that.

“It’ll be okay,” she tells him, rocking him gently back and forth. “I’ll be here until you sleep.”

“You’ll be here longer than that, songbird.”

Eurydice jumps. Persephone has appeared in the flowers. She’s wearing a dark green dress edged in black lace, no longer divided between the manic joy of summer and the depressed captivity of winter. Her smile is soft.

“What?” Eurydice’s voice trembles.

Persephone kneels beside them in the grass. “I watched Hades burn your contract myself,” she says. “Hades has set you free.”

Eurydice must have misheard. “I don’t understand.”

A wry smile twitches up the goddess’s lips. “His exact words were, ‘keeping that damn boy out of my hair will be impossible if I keep her for good. Every reincarnation’s gonna be charging down my doorstep. Might as well save myself the hassle.’”

Orpheus is clinging to her, still awake. Eurydice’s arms are around him still, but they feel very distant. “What are you saying?”

“You get to rest, Eurydice.” Persephone pushes her hair back. “You get to rest with him. Until your next lives.”

A thousand words crowd Eurydice’s tongue. Words of thanks, words of confusion, words of sorrow. “Tell the others that I say goodbye,” is what she says. “Medusa, Achilles and Patriclus, you know the ones I’m friends with.”

Persephone nods, her smile never faltering. She stands. “We’ll raise a cup to both of you, tonight,” she promises.

Eurydice can only nod.

And then the goddess is gone, and it’s just her and Orpheus, laying together in the grass. Orpheus’s hand brushes across her cheek, and it’s only then that she realizes she’s crying.

“It’s you and me,” he tells her. “It’s alright.”

She nods. Doubt tries to come in, to tell him that even if they’re reborn, there’s still a chance that they’ll never meet. But even those voices, which can sound so loud, don’t have power in this bright field.

In her heart, she knows that they’ll meet again. He won’t look exactly like himself, he might not even be a he. But she believes that one day, she’ll look into a pair of perfect hazel eyes and feel like they belonged to someone that she’s always known.

But, still, she buries her face in Orpheus’s shirt and she  _ mourns _ . Mourns the life she could have had with him, growing old by his side. They’ll never get the chance to be Orpheus and Eurydice again. This life of theirs is over, it’s ended.

But there are worse ways to end, she supposes, than in her lover’s arms, his fingers in her hair, his voice humming a soothing melody in her ear.

So she lets it go, and she lays down beside him in the grass. They cling to each other. Time passes, and her tears dry. More time passes, and she no longer remembers precisely why she cried them.

But she remembers the arms around her, and she remembers the promises they made to each other, once. When she opens her mouth to sing another promise, she’s not surprised to hear her lover’s voice joining her, matching her word for word.

She thinks that, this time, it will be a promise that they both keep.

_ “Wait for me, I’m coming _ _  
_ _ Wait, I’m coming with you _ __  
_ Wait for me, I’m coming too _ _  
_ __ I’m coming too…”

**Author's Note:**

> This doesn't share continuity with my other fics but this concept made me cry so naturally I had to write it.


End file.
